■CHINA
Plane lands abruptly
A Japan Airlines flight bound for Tokyo made an emergency landing at an airport in Shanghai because of engine problems apparently caused after striking a flock of birds. No one was injured. The plane took off from Hongqiao Airport at 2:30pm on Saturday with 208 passengers and 14 crew onboard but encountered engine problems 10 minutes later, Xinhua news agency reported. An initial investigation indicated the plane hit a flock of birds after take off, but further investigation was ongoing, Xinhua said late on Saturday.
■NEPAL
Police arrest ‘pedophile’
Police arrested a Frenchman wanted internationally on pedophile charges, media reports said yesterday. Jean Jacques Haye, 60, was arrested in the northeastern outskirts of Kathmandu on a tip from an organization working for children, the Himalayan Times newspaper quoted police as saying. French authorities were seeking Haye on charges of sexually abusing children, and an Interpol warrant was issued. “During interrogation, Haye said he was married to a Nepali woman and was living in Kathmandu since August last year,” said Mira Choudhary, deputy superintendent of Kathmandu Metropolitan Police. He said a woman claimed she was Haye’s spouse and that she had been living with him for the past 10 years.
■AUSTRALIA
Navy detains 54 boat people
The navy detained 54 suspected asylum seekers after intercepting their boat off the Northern Territory, officials said yesterday. Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said a navy vessel spotted the boat on Saturday night off the Coburg Peninsula, northeast of Darwin. Debus said they were being taken to an immigration detention center at Christmas Island, an territory in the Indian Ocean. The Australian Broadcasting Corp reported that most of the asylum seekers were believed to be from Afghanistan.
■CHINA
Cargo ship sinks, three killed
Three people were killed when a Vietnamese ship sank in a gale in the South China Sea late on Friday, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday. The coal transport vessel with seven crew members on board sank around 9:30pm on Friday about 40km southwest of Fangcheng Port, in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the agency said. The South China Sea Rescue Bureau under the Ministry of Transport sent a vessel to the site where the ship sank in winds of up to 90kph. Rescuers found three bodies, while four crew still remaineds missing, Xinhua said.
■MALAYSIA
Man wounded hunting frogs
A man was hit by pellets believed to be from the shotgun of nearby deer hunters when he went looking for frogs, a news report said yesterday. The victim, 46, was hunting for frogs on Friday night in the northern Kedah state when he was shot in the buttocks, the News Straits Times daily reported. “I was approaching a river when I heard a gunshot. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain on my left buttock,” he said. The victim sought the help of a friend by mobile phone and was rushed to a hospital. Doctors removed the pellets from the victim, who was reported to be in stable condition. Police said they are investigating whether the victim had been mistaken for a deer by hunters.
■GERMANY
Call for tighter gun control
Chancellor Angela Merkel called yesterday for tighter gun control in her country after a teenager used his father’s pistol to kill 15 people and himself. “We will probably never be able to prevent [another such massacre], but one of the lessons from this horrible event is to be vigilant,” Merkel said in an interview with public radio. “The possession of weapons and munitions is a subject that we must strongly pay attention to — it must be controlled, rules must be applied,” she said. She also evoked the possibility of having “spot checks” of weapons just days after the bloodbath in the small southwestern town of Winnenden, near Stuttgart. On Wednesday, Tim Kretschmer, 17, dressed in black combat gear and armed with a Beretta gun taken from his father’s bedroom, began a rampage at his former school.
■SYRIA
MPs meet Hamas leader
A delegation of British members of parliament (MPs) pressing their government to hold direct talks with Hamas has met with the Palestinian militant group’s exiled leader in Syria. Britain, along with the US and the EU, considers Hamas a terrorist organization and refuses to have talks with the group, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007. The six politicians include Labour Party member Clare Short and Jenny Tonge, a parliamentarian who was fired as her party’s spokeswoman on children’s issues after expressing understanding for Palestinian suicide bombers in 2004. Short told reporters in Syria on Saturday that the aim of the visit was to urge the British government to talk to Hamas in the interests of peace.
■EGYPT
Fire injures 14 people
A fire has damaged a historic apartment building in downtown Cairo, injuring 14 people and sending huge plumes of smoke over the city. Firefighters doused the nine-story building with water on Saturday as flames leapt from its upper floors. The site, near the High Court, was under renovation as part of a program to restore downtown Cairo’s 19th century buildings. Police say the 14 injured suffered burns and smoke inhalation. Cairo has been hit by several major fires recently, prompting criticism of poorly enforced safety rules. In August, the upper house of parliament was heavily damaged. One firefighter was killed in that blaze, which raged for 18 hours.
■ISRAEL
Shin Bet head visits Egypt
The head of the Shin Bet intelligence service is in Egypt as part of a fresh push for the release of an Israeli soldier held by Palestinian militants since 2006. A statement from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office said Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin and veteran prisoner-swap negotiator Ofer Dekel were in Cairo to meet senior Egyptian officials mediating between Israel and Hamas, whose allies hold Sergeant Gilad Schalit. It said Diskin and Dekel traveled to Egypt on Saturday “to make an additional effort” to try to get Shalit released. They planned to return home yesterday evening.
■MADAGASCAR
Rajoelina giving army orders
Opposition leader Andry Rajoelina said yesterday he had the army’s backing and was giving it orders in a standoff with the Indian Ocean nation’s president. “Of course, it is me who is giving the army orders. I am in permanent contact with them,” Rajoelina said. He is urging President Marc Ravalomanana to step down in a crisis that has killed more than 135 people.
■UNITED STATES
Immigrants found in pipe
Eight suspected illegal immigrants, including a 16-year-old boy, were found inside a drainage pipe at the nation’s busiest border crossing late on Saturday after a day-long search by authorities. None of the six males and two females appeared to have suffered serious injury, said Vince Bond, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection. “They were dehydrated and hungry,” Bond said. Investigators planned to interview the group and determine their nationalities. Authorities began searching for the group after a motorist reported seeing about 12 people enter a storm drain in front of inspection booths at the San Ysidro port of entry that connects San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico.
■UNITED STATES
Man wants to grow pot
It looks like the Montana Department of Transportation will stick to fixing potholes instead of helping to grow pot. A Billings man has asked the department if he can have several light bulbs that were recently taken down from a Missoula bridge so he can use them to grow marijuana for medical patients. A crew recently replaced the lights with cheaper fluorescent bulbs. Now, 25-year-old Rick Baker, a medical marijuana caregiver and patient, hopes the lights can help grow cannabis for a co-op that he wants to start in Missoula. The Montana Medical Marijuana Act allows a patient and caregiver to keep up to six plants. Baker estimated the startup costs to care for that many plants at between US$600 and US$1,100, and he said the lights were an expensive part of the package, the Missoulian newspaper said.
■CANADA
Chopper wreckage found
Investigators found what they think is the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed in the freezing Atlantic with 18 aboard, saying on Saturday their main goal was to recover any of the 16 missing bodies that may still be inside. Rescue efforts turned to recovery as officials said there was almost no chance of survival so long after Thursday’s crash. The Sikorsky S-92 was carrying workers to oil platforms off Newfoundland when it reported mechanical problems and ditched into the sea about 48km from shore, officials said. One survivor and one body were recovered from the water shortly after the crash. Survivor Robert Decker is listed in critical but stable condition.
■MEXICO
Gay politico runs for mayor
One of the first openly gay politicians is to contest mayoral elections in the country’s second-biggest city this July. Thirty-one-year-old Miguel Antonio Galan was selected as the leftist Social Democratic Party’s candidate to become mayor of Guadalajara, central Mexico, late on Friday, he said. He will be one of the first openly gay politicians to run for mayor the conservative predominantly Catholic country. NotieSe, a news agency focused on gay, lesbian and bisexual issues, noted a number of federal and state-level lawmakers had openly admitted to being gay.
■CUBA
Castro getting better
Argentine sociologist Atilio Boron, who has met former president Fidel Castro recently, said the condition of the revolutionary leader has “notably” improved. “His long convalescence has allowed him to improve notably,” Boron wrote of Castro in an article posted on the Web site Cubadebate. Boron was in Havana in the first week of this month and paid a visit to the ailing leader. Castro, 82, effectively handed over power to his brother Raul in July 2006 following a health crisis.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
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